Halo - GrandmasterJ

     This map is supposed to be Halo, it says right in the map description: You are Master Chief, A Cyborg who recently escaped the planet Halo. Aside from the incredible story this map is indistinguishable from a Black Mesa map.

SCMapDB page

Author: Matt *e**rm**er

Date of release: 2003

Maps in package: 1

Map review of Halo

(originally posted on SCMapDB)

by GrandmasterJ | May 24, 2026 | 2483 characters

    So this is supposed to be a Halo map. I guess it can kind of look like Halo if you squint at the first room which is a Half-Life office with a window into space. Then from the supposed cockpit we travel forward, in front of the cockpit into more ship. At one point there is a train track tunnel with barriers blocking our way. There is also a tent. I mean if somebody is working with limited resources to make a conversion like turning Half-Life into Halo I don't expect perfection but this is nonsense. The ship makes no sense, just random Half-Life styled rooms and vents. The enemies aren't even renamed, if this wasn't labelled 'Halo' I would never have gotten Halo from it.

    There are doors with wooden boards over them. Metal doors that slide to the side on what I am guessing is a space ship or station of some kind and somebody decided the best way to barricade a door was wooden boards. The proportions aren't great either in this map with lots of skinny doors and tall vents.

    The gameplay is straightforward and linear with only a handful of side rooms to find goodies in. At one point I rescued a scientist, one of three, and my teammate swears they did not rescue any scientists but when we hit the end of the map it said we rescued them all. Edit: We saved a soldier and the G-man and that counted for our rescues, I was not there for the soldier and I was confused by the G-man. Enemies appear in big clumps and respawn a couple times before they are cleared out. Everything is tight quarters so shotguns and any explosives are king. The enemies are overwhelmingly alien grunts so we die a lot to ambient bugs. It's kind of frustrating but we can grind through it.

    There's really not much of note here. This map is not Halo and beyond the two windows we have into space it doesn't even try. There are no custom models, sounds, or even textures. The combat is clunky with little variation and is solved by throwing ourselves at it and the map ends awkwardly after defeating a gargantua by throwing explosives into the room it is trapped inside.

Pros:

• The map gives us plenty of ammo
• straightforward, no getting lost
• there are enemies in small rooms and the map gives us grenades

Cons:

• This is not Halo
• level design is really bad
• combat is just wads of the same type of enemy over and over again

Score: 4 / 10